Friday, January 13, 2012

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

I have decided to join Help-Portrait movement which will take place on December 12 2009.

Help Portrait is a movement of photographers who are using their time, equipment and expertise to give back to those who are less fortunate this holiday season. Watch this video by Jermy Cowart.

At first I thought it is another nice idea, but then I found that I have two options:1- Just sit on my comfortable chair and let the time passes watching other people doing it.2- Use my passion for photography to make a few people happy about themselves by giving prints of their portraits.

If you are interested to get into an experience to mark your life’s journey, take the initiative and join thousands of photographers from all over the world at Help-Portrait.com.

There are very few opportunities in life to make other people happy by doing what you love most. Make this yours.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

No matter how much we read and learn about digital or film photography, there are always some terms or names for photo equipment that we keep stumbling on and don't know what they really mean especially for beginners, terms like "Hyperfocal Distance", "Cookie", "Gobo" or the difference between "Bracketing" and "Flash Bracket".. Well do you?

I want to give a shout out to GPP for forwarding me this neat website PhotoNotes.org which has an online dictionary for EVERY PHOTOGRAPHY TERM YOU HAVE HEARD OR NOT HEARD ABOUT. Plus it has reviews and equipment guide dedicated to Canon owners (they realy need one in my opinion). What I like about this website its simplicity, just drop the term you want to know about in the empty box and hit Search and that's it! No registration needed no hassel, clean and simple.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

I still remember my first photography workshop with Joe like it was yesterday, is was April 1 this year in Dubai when our group went out on location with Joe and spent a great afternoon photographing hip hop and ballet dancers. Observing Joe at work to me was a priceless experience and I could not help not to see a bottle of Advil sitting beside him while he was taking that group photo of young hip hop dancers published on his blog later on.

Being 29 and having arthritis is a downer but photography makes me forget all about the pain while kneeling on the concrete floor to get that good angle but most importantly Joe’s way in dealing with pain is a true source of inspiration and power to continue what I love to do as on that same day when I fractured my ankle while stepping down from the bus that took us back from the location I saw another side of Joe who quickly poured some water on his hands and rubbed my ears to wake me up as I fainted for a moment and he stayed with me until the ambulance came and took me. He was caring and did what he could to ease the pain I felt that moment. I was extremely embarrassed but at the same time very high spirited because I went on location for a day with Joe McNally.

At one moment I thought this is it, I can’t continue the workshop and despite the doctor’s order to stay in bed for a week the next morning I found myself leaving home early without my gear except for the camera hanging on my neck. My foot was in a cast I was walking on crutches and took a taxi to Joe’s workshop which was in another city from where I live. I was sweating buckets for every few meters I walk but I made it to the workshop that day.

Truth must be said that if it was not for Joe’s words and his spirit I would not even consider leaving home the following day.

Joe did not just taught me photography but also perseverance and to face bad luck and bad bones with a smile and a camera in hand.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

To this day I still find photographers who just bought their first DSLRs and when they go outdoors to take a picture of a lovely sunset their cameras can't see anything but fog which is a common problem for photographers who live in this area were humidity sometimes reach ridiculous levels and most of them don't know how to work arround this problem as they feel that they just can't go out anytime they want and shoot some pictures. I was one of them.

Back then I bought my first SLR which was a brand new D80 which I still use it as a backup. When I first encountered this problem I tried to look for a solution in the owners manual and then with the local dealer thinking that they sales people might give me the solution, then I went online at that time but again no luck, then I have decided to ask "the mother ship" Nikon but they forwarded my enquiry back to their UAE agents and below is their response:

Response (Nikon UAE Tech Support) 01/08/2007 01.17 PM

"Dear Mr.Fadi,

Thank you for contacting Nikon Asia Technical Support. Your case has been forwarded to us.We will assist you from here.

Reference to your mail with regards to your Nikon D80 Digital SLR Camera the problem that you specified with regards to the high humidity currently we are not able to provide you any solution for the same, moreover we would like into this matter and see if there can be any solution for the same in the future.

Thank you once again for your support on Nikon Products. We hope that we have addressed your concerns.

Please feel free to contact us for more information.

With regards,Nikon Technical Support Agent"

Talking about going straight to the source!

Anyway here is the solution:
If you keep your DSLR in an air-conditioned room like most of us do, you need to plan when you will go out and take pictures (say around sunset) and then you either bring your camera into warmer place like your balconey (in shadowed area of course) with the camera bag halfway opend to allow warm air to reach the camera and keep it there for about an hour or may be less depending on the humidity level out there right before you go out shooting. What I do is the day I plan to go out and take pictures I put the camera with the camera bag halfway opend in the trunk of my car about half an hour before going out. The trick is to give the body of the camera (and the lenses too) a chance to get to warm temperature for a while before you star shooting, and that's it!

Monday, September 7, 2009

I have been a member of Jurgita.com for a year and I did get in touch with some nice people, photographers and models from all over the place but I started to get the impression that this is not enough, then I have watched a seminar organized by Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai on April 09 titled "Making the Web Work for You" and David Hobby, David Nightingaleand Chase Jarviswere talking in this seminar about their experience with using the web and how it affected their lives on professional level and how much they gained not by advertising themselves but by putting their experience out there to people who are interested to learn more about the art of photography and giving people the knowledge they have acquired over the years and sometimes share the difficulties they face either on a professional or technical level.

A good example is the world famous photographer Joe McNally who is to me is the Frank Sinatra in the photography world. He believes that there are no secrets in photography or mysteries to be solved as he described once in one of his seminars "it is about keeping your head in the game" which means that once you comprehend and apply the basic principles in photography the only limit is to how to apply the those principles creatively and in new ways.

To get hold of this video, go to Chase Jarvis blog and search for the seminar title above. Or, if you are an iTuner, look for Chase Jarvis podcast and download this seminar.

I have been learning photography for the past 5 years, I have read over 14 books about photography and over two dozens magazines on photography techniques and equipment and I am still reading whatever I can get my hands on. Therefore, I have decided to challenge myself and help other fellow photographers by answering any question they might have related to photography techniques to the best of my ability. However I must be clear about the following:

I do this for free and if you don't think my answers are 100% scientifically correct or not complete, well, at least you don't have to wait for a refund cheque. However, if I could not answer your question, I am welling to try to solve your question on practical bases and share with you all what I have come up with.

I am not a post production guy because I like to "make" the picture the way I would like the viewer to see it with minimum tweaking. so for those who are into Photoshop, Sorry guys!

Finally, I must say that I don't know where this will take me or how this "experiment" will turn out but at least it is better than just doing nothing for another year.

Thank you for visiting my blog.I have established this blog to communicate with other fellow photographers based in UAE and also abroad to build some sort of "knowledge base dump" dedicated for troubleshooting any problems that could face any amateur photographers. I hope by establishing this blog that we could learn and save trial and error time by learning from each other and produce as many good pictures as possible. So if you have anything to share, please feel free to do so. Until then, keep making pictures!FadiKelada